8 comments:

Well, but to maintain that, we have strict laws that harshly punish any doctors or nurses who take sexual advantage of their patients. The existence of those laws shows just how hard it is to break the connection between nudity and sex, even in professional spaces where the nudity is strictly necessary and for non-sexual purposes.

I suppose that's fine with these groups, though. To maintain that nudity in a public setting is nonsexual, we'll have to impose harsh sentences on anyone who has a sexual response to it. More laws, more prisons, more control.

Still, clothing is used for communication--pretty much everywhere. Even if the clothing only consists of a string of beads.

I remember trying to puzzle through the french in a magazine in a hostel common area. One article was about explorers in South America, and included a photo of the tribal king and his wife and princess. The princess was just wearing beads, but you could tell she considered herself dressed to the nines, and thought you should be gratified that she deigned to be present. A later article showed a few bikini-clad resort goers who wore quite a lot more, but with a different purpose.

Whether those Canadians like it or not, the culture they live in ascribes significance to clothing or its lack (in this circumstances or that: running clothes mean something different in the park and in church). Pushing the boundaries may or may not change the culture in the long run, but in the short run they will look like women trying to use their bodies to get attention.

To maintain that nudity in a public setting is nonsexual, we'll have to impose harsh sentences on anyone who has a sexual response to it.

Eh? Why? A doctor or nurse in the medical setting might have a sexual response to a nude female patient, but we don't punish that. (We do punish rape, but rape is considerably more than just "a sexual response". Someone who rapes a woman because he sees her swimming topless has something wrong with him that goes far beyond having a sexual response to the sight.)

Also, I don't agree that we have laws and norms against sexual contact between doctor and patient because of nudity. Those laws apply whether the doctor's specialty is such that there's nudity involved or not—they apply to neurologists and psychiatrists, for instance—and we also apply similar rules to other professionals like lawyers and teachers. They're not there because there is nudity, but because of the potential for abuse of the power relationship between doctor and patient.

I'm not trying to suggest that there aren't other reasons why sexuality is suppressed in medical settings. I'm only suggesting that the response to nudity is one of the things that has to be suppressed.

I mean even a doctor coming in and seeing a naked patient and saying, "Wow, you're really hot! How about we get together for a drink after this? By the way, let's proceed with that physical examination."

That kind of thing is going to be punished pretty stiffly, albeit not likely with prison time. To enforce the non-sexual professional environment, there have to be stern consequences for having that kind of response.

Likewise at the beach, I think, and in spite of the absence of the doctor/patient power imbalance. Nude women appear; men studiously pretend not to notice. How likely is that? Well, much more likely if there is some serious consequence to the kind of "Wow, hot!" reaction. It might be a tort, or it might be a kind of misdemeanor, but you'll need some capacity to sanction sexual responses or you won't get a beach space in which "nudity is not sexual."

Same thing at the beach, except that there's nothing wrong with asking someone for a date at the beach.

Well, also, same thing for the office. There, too, to enforce a sexual harassment free environment we've proven to need strict rules and harsh penalties. And there's not even nudity in the office, exceptis excipiendis.

So my sense that realizing this 'nudity is not sexual' concept in play at the beach is going to require rules and penalties -- i.e., control -- is I think well-grounded. I'd suggest that it's been our experience in other areas, too.